Wednesday, 19 November 2014

Impressively, infinitely, irrrrresistably Italian!

Recipe: Baked Gnocchi with Blue Cheese

Time taken: 1 hour

Ingredients: a splash of oil, half a 250g pack of chestnut
mushrooms, a clove of garlic, half a 280g jar of artichoke antipasto, half a
500g bag of gnocchi, 100ml soured cream, a handful of parsley leaves, half a 100g
block of blue cheese, and a slice of bread.

Today's hard sought ingredients...

Evening ChefBeHere
readers,

I’m wishing upon a star that it’s been a wonderful Wednesday
for you all! Except I can’t really see any stars because it’s been raining all
day here and it’s raining right now, and there’s so much cloud I can’t imagine it
will ever stop raining. Look out of the window everyone and if all you can see is
cloud, here’s a star for you to wish on instead.

Until the sky gets its act together...

So today I haven’t been busy at all! I’ve had a very
leisurely day working from our student flat and watching it rain. The highlights
of my day have been festive coffee, living room yoga and the new Wretch 32 song
‘6 Words’. It’s been quite lovely.

With all that mooching, I stored up some serious chefing energy and so I decided
to attempt a proper recipe for my tea today! Out came the Morrisons Christmas
magazine, my bud, and I decided to maaaaaake… this!

It’s ‘Baked Gnocchi with Blue Cheese’

The shot above is straight out of the magazine, but this
recipe went really well for me and I think my photo at the end of the post (don't skip to the end... patience) even looks quite
like the magazine one. To me. So, this recipe took a bit more effort than my previous
posts, I admit, but it tasted SO GOOD you all should go the mile and have a go
at it!

Now I’ve eaten gnocchi (pronounced ‘nocky’) in restaurants
before, but I've never tried to cook it. Gnocchi are basically little baby balls of
pasta, and when you eat them they taste like pasta, but somehow they also taste
a bit like dumplings and like tiny potatoes at the same time! I think this is because
those are what gnocchi look like and are shaped like, so your eyes tell your tummy that’s what to
expect. But really it’s pasta!

So I haven’t heard many people say they’ve tried gnocchi and I
wouldn’t expect to see it on every restaurant menu, but I found it easily enough
in Asda and I think a 2 Serving pack only cost me about £1. Gnocchi comes all
ready-made so you just heat it up, and that’s all you have to do. It turns out this isn't the complicated, high-skill ingredient that I imagined it to be! It's a babe really.

The tricky ingredient I found, was ‘artichoke antipasto’. I
was like… What? Huh?Is this a
vegetable? Does it involve pesto? What language is that? My flatmates starting telling me this was fish and the recipe couldn't be vegetarian. So, I googled. I turns
out artichoke IS a vegetable (knew it) and in this case it’s in some kind of antipasto
oil, together in a jar?? Sounds weird, looks weird. But, with no fish harmed, the man in Asda found
it on the Italian cooking aisle, right by my gnocchi. It wasn’t
cheap, I think it was £2-3 maybe, so this is a special occasion recipe if, like
me, you’re on a student budget. But persevere.

Here’s how you throw together your gnocchi in ten easy
steps…

1.Preheat your oven to 180˚C.

2.Prep your ingredients! Using a sharp knife, chop
your mushrooms in quarters and have a chop at your parsley leaves, so that they’re
in small shreds rather than full leaves. Use a cheese grater to try to grate
your slice of bread until about half of it is in breadcrumbs, then chuck the
other half away which will probably have turned to stodge in your hand. Or put
it out in your garden/cement patch for the birds, like me. Use your hands to
crumble the cheese into chunks. Use a garlic crusher to smush your garlic into
an ooze. Tip half your jar of freaky artichoke onto some kitchen roll and pat
it down so that it’s less oily, then chop it into bite-sized pieces. Now you’re
prepared.

3.Cautiously heat your oil in a frying pan and
cook the mushrooms for 5 minutes. They’ll start to turn a golden brown colour
and they should make your kitchen smell sensational. Meanwhile, boil a kettle
of water.

4.Place the gnocchi into a saucepan along with a
pinch of salt. Add the boiling water and boil your gnocchi for 2 minutes.

ChefBeHere Top
Tip: Put a lid on your pan! Then the water stays hot and your gnocchi will cook
quickly, so you need to use the hob for a shorter time and you save energy and
SAVE THE WORLD!

5.Add your artichoke and garlic to the frying pan
and sizzle them for a couple of minutes with your mushrooms, stirring it all
up.

6.Take your gnocchi off the heat and drain them
using a colander or sieve.

7.Chuck your sour cream, most of your parsley, all
of your gnocchi and then your mushroom mix, all together in a little baking
dish. Give them a good stir.

8.Decoratively arrange your cheesy chunks on top
and then artistically sprinkle the dish with your breadcrumbs and your
remaining parsley.

My baby, all oven-ready.

9.Bake in the oven for ten minutes until your
cheese is melted and your breadcrumbs have become golden and toasted.

10.Safely transport your tea from the oven to the table,
and enjoy a taste of Italy!

After all that hard work, here’s how mine looked!

And, in my opinion it tasted delicious. Tonight’s tea was a
very flavoursome, indulgent dish that made me feel like I was eating in a
restaurant. I rated it! Overall, I think my gnocchi was definitely worth the
hunt for ingredients and the extra time spent in the kitchen tonight. And the
portion was just right for one person. Plus, I have enough of all the
ingredients left that I can make it again this week, and I’m looking forward to
eating this again. Win win!

If anyone has it in them to take on the gnocchi… DO IT! Go on,
surprise yourself and whip up something fancy and masterful for a change. You
deserve this in your belly. And if you’re cooking for someone else too, this is
going to earn you major brownie points. What do you have to lose?

Share your experiences, people. Hit me with them. How did you get on cooking
the gnocchi? Did you find the ingredients ok in the shop? Did you like how it tasted? Do
you think the recipe needs altering at all, maybe?

And did it feel festive?? Because it is in the Morrisons
Christmas Magazine! So you should at least be able to hear faint sleigh bells
while eating. I think the Xmas link comes from CHESTNUT mushrooms. I can’t get
enough of Christmas hype right now, so even the slightest link is enough for
me.This baked gnocchi is a Merry Masterpiece!